The Best Rootin' Tootin' Shootin' Gunslinger in the Whole Damned Galaxy Read Free Page A

card."
    Â Â Â Â Â Â  Thaddeus Flint, who had been sitting about a quarter of a mile from the ship, propped up against a small, gnarly tree and thoughtfully sipping a none-too-cold beer, looked up and saw a dapper man in his fifties, wearing a derby hat, a white shirt, carefully pressed gray pants, a bright red satin vest, and a pair of diamond rings that sparkled with the same intensity as Beta Epsilon IV’s low-hanging sun. Flint stared at the proffered deck for a moment, then resumed looking at the barren brown landscape that stretched away from the Midway in all directions, highlighted here and there by the dull midday sun.
    Â Â Â Â Â Â  “Three of spades,” he said in a bored voice.
    Â Â Â Â Â Â  “You’re supposed to pick one, and then I got to guess what it is,” Jason Diggs explained patiently.
    Â Â Â Â Â Â  “Rigger,” said Flint—Diggs was in charge of the carnival’s fifty-six games of chance, and had long since earned the sobriquet Digger the Rigger—“I hope to hell you didn’t traipse all the way out here to show me a goddamned card trick."
    Â Â Â Â Â Â  “Of course not,” replied Diggs, masking his disappointment and putting the deck away.
    Â Â Â Â Â Â  “And don’t look so heartbroken,” added Flint. “That’s a stripper deck: it hasn’t got a three of spades. What it’s got is twenty-six queens of hearts, all shaven, and twenty-six other cards, all sevens and higher."
    Â Â Â Â Â Â  “Son of a bitch!” exclaimed Diggs, withdrawing the deck from his pocket and examining it. “I hadn’t even noticed."
    Â Â Â Â Â Â  Flint snorted. “Yeah. It probably would have escaped your attention while you lost some one-dollar bets, and would have come to you in a flash the second we upped the stakes to fifty.” He finished his beer and tossed the empty can out onto the sparse brown vegetation.
    Â Â Â Â Â Â  “You figure to leave a few cans on every planet in the galaxy?” asked Diggs.
    Â Â Â Â Â Â  “Ten minutes after we’re gone, that’s the only way they’ll ever know we were even here."
    Â Â Â Â Â Â  “Well, I can see you’re in a bright mood today."
    Â Â Â Â Â Â  “And I can only assume you’re here to add to it,” said Flint. “What seems to be the problem?"
    Â Â Â Â Â Â  “You got a mighty unhappy cowboy on your hands, Thaddeus."
    Â Â Â Â Â Â  Flint chuckled.
    Â Â Â Â Â Â  “What’s so funny about that?” demanded Diggs.
    Â Â Â Â Â Â  “Rigger, you aren’t exactly a prime candidate for the Pulitzer Prize in journalism. We’ve been out here—what?—five years now, and you’re just coming to the realization that the Dancer isn’t the happiest person you’ve ever seen?"
    Â Â Â Â Â Â  “He’s getting worse."
    Â Â Â Â Â Â  “He never talks to anyone, he’s spent half his waking hours for the past ten years staring off into space, he probably hasn’t had a woman in even longer than that, he doesn’t drink, he doesn’t smoke, and the next time he swears will be the first. How much worse can he get?"
    Â Â Â Â Â Â  “He keeps to himself all the time."
    Â Â Â Â Â Â  “He always did,” replied Flint, lighting up a cigarette.
    Â Â Â Â Â Â  “Damn it, Thaddeus, I’m trying to tell you that your superstar is crazy!"
    Â Â Â Â Â Â  “I never said he wasn’t,” said Flint. “He’s been crazy since the day I met him. So what? He’s harmless.” He turned and pointed to two figures that were walking down the middle of the Midway, engaged in animated conversation; one was human, one was very definitely